Kenyan Information Official Leads an IT Revolution

Since Bitange Ndemo got Kenya hooked up to high-speed Internet, there has been no stopping his cyber-progress. A ‘Silicon Savannah’ is now flourishing.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Along Nairobi’s dusty Ngong Road, so many start-up incubators and IT labs have popped up that the busy neighborhood has been nicknamed “Silicon Savannah.”

Techies, geeks and innovators race one another to come up with the next big thing. They rush from meeting to meeting, work late, skip weekends. Every other day there’s a pitch night for tech start-ups, a creative Web workshop, or a meeting of mobile app developers.